Show Me The Minnay

Edouard Manet, Portrait of Minnay, 1879, image via Drouot via The Guardian

OK, 2021 can stay for now.

The most conceptually Manet of Manet’s dog paintings was also the most mysterious. On a visit with the Gauthier-Lathuille family in 1879, Edouard Manet comandeered the tiny portrait Louis had begun of his sister Marguerite’s dog, Minnay, and cranked out his own version in 20 minutes. The resulting canvas had stayed in the Lathuille family ever since, documented in the early 20th century for the artist’s catalogue raisonné but never exhibited.

Minnay until now, via the CR, 34×26 cm

Now it is being sold.

Longtime greg.org reader and fellow Manet dog painting enthusiast TG reports that it will be auctioned by the family next month in Paris. The estimate: a ridiculously low EUR220,000-280,000. The auction is also the occasion for a new photograph [top], which does support the painting’s origin myth: it really does look like Manet slapped a blizzard of brushstrokes on top of a vaguely dog-shaped white blob before his coffee cooled. And I mean that in the best possible way.

The auction will be preceded by two days and one hour of public exhibition, after which time the painting will be bought by someone–you, perhaps!–who will then give it to me. Who will then give it to me. Who will then give it to me. Who will then give it to me. Who will then

Previously unseen dog painting by Manet to be sold at Paris auction [guardian, thanks TG]
26 Feb 2021, Lot No 97 Édouard Manet, le Chien Minnay, 1879, est. EUR220-280,000 [drouot]
Previously: Manet Paints Dog

Untitled (News Coverage), 2021

Untitled (News Coverage), 2021, Fox News marquee signage, garbage bags, tape, dimensions variable, installation view Jan 18, 2021 at 444 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC, image: @jimswiftdc

Seeing this work installed for the first time, I am reminded of earlier works, like Untitled (Protestors’ Folding Item) of 2014, an LRAD cover installed on an LRAD;

nypd_lrad_seismomedia_1.jpg
Installation view: Protestors’ Folding Item (LRAD 500X/500X-RE), ink on Cordura, nylon webbing, LRAD, 2014, Collection: NYPD Order Control Unit

and the series of black monochrome on plywood pieces from 2016 titled Untitled (Trump Plaza Black),

trump_plaza_monochrome_pofac_blk-3.jpg

Untitled (Trump Plaza Black) Nos. 4 & 5, 2016, paint on panel, each in two parts, collection: Trump Entertainment Resorts/Carl Icahn, installation photo via Press of Atlantic City

which were hastily installed during the 2016 campaign over the dingy palimpsest of Trump’s name on the facade of the abandoned and bankrupt casino in Atlantic City.

And it reminded me that it very much mattered to the works that they were in the collections of the NYPD Order Control Unit and Trump Entertainment Resorts & Carl Icahn, respectively.

So when this piece went up on the facade of the Fox News studio facing the US Capitol building, in between the white supremacist insurrectionists’ attack on vote certification slash barely thwarted massacre of politicians, and the hastily militarized inauguration, where troops are literally–I hope–protecting the elected president and vice president from the paramilitary mobs of the current/outgoing president, it feels very important to point out that Fox News absolutely owns this.

Signed, J(ohn) F(olwell)

a mahogany chest-on-chest from philadelphia, with original brass hardware, intricate carved ornament on top, and a solid provenance, being sold at sotheby's
Chest on Chest, c 1770, attributed to Philadelphia cabinetmaker John Folwell, for sale at Sotheby’s

I love the idea that some furniture is “important.” This chest-on-chest has descended through some Philadelphia/New Jersey families since it was originally ordered sometime before the Revolutionary War, and those family connections are important, but not right here, not right now. The finish is old and excellent; the hardware is original; the elaborately carved cartouche is intact, and it’s all similar to similarly important pieces in important collections, but that is not really important right now, right here, either.

But because of all this, this chest was attributed to the most prominent Philadelphia cabinetmaker of the time, Thomas Affleck, one of the few guys in town known to have his own copy of Thomas Chippendale’s gentleman furniture pattern book.

gorgeously carved initials JF, hidden inside a circa 1770 chest-on-chest from Philadelphia being sold at Sotheby's
JF, likely John Folwell, initials carved into the top of the bottom of an important Philadelphia chest-on-chest formerly attributed to Thomas Affleck, to be sold at Sotheby’s this week.

But then when this thing came in, and came apart, this giant, gorgeous, script monogram JF was found carved in the top of the lower chest, invisible to anyone except the movers, or the maker. And so now this important chest-on-chest is attributed to John Folwell, another Philadelphia cabinetmaker, and its similarity should prompt a re-examination of the attribution of some of the other important furniture out there. I would like more things to have been elaborately and secretly inscribed by their makers, please.

Jan 21, 2021, Lot 34: The Important Stratton-Carpenter-Wheeler Family Chippendale Carved and Figured Mahogany Chest-on-Chest, cabinetwork attributed to John Folwell (w. 1762-1780); carving attributed to James Reynolds (w. 1766-1794), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, circa 1770, est. $50-100,000 [update: sold for $69k. nice.] [sothebys]

Previously, related attributed 18th century carved scripts: Paul Revere (attr.) Time Capsule Plaque, silver, engraved text

Quartered

a bronze plaque with raised text listing the regiments that quartered in the us capitol after Lincoln's call for volunteers on April 15, 1861, which was installed in 1964
Bronze plaque commemorating the quartering of US military troops in the US Capitol after the onset of civil war in 1861, image: aoc.gov, which is actually architect of the capitol, not, you know

On April 15, 1861, following the attack on Fort Sumter, SC, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve in state militias for three months and to defend the Union:

Whereas the laws of the United States have been, for some time past, and now are, opposed, and the execution there of obstructed…by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law…I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular Government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

A Proclamation by the President of the United States, April 15, 1861

The headcount, militia structure, and time limit were written into law in 1795 and had not changed, because the US did not have a large, standing army before the Civil War. By 1861, large numbers of officers in the small US Army had already begun leaving their posts to join the Confederacy. Governors from Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Arkansas refused, and began seceding.

Volunteers from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia who responded to the call billeted in federal buildings, including the US Capitol. The first troops to arrive, from Pennsylvania, pushed through a mob in Baltimore to reach DC by train on April 18th. They headed straight for the Capitol. As more forces arrived, they fanned out across the District, in buildings rapidly converted to military use.

In the Summer of 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, strengthening Black Americans’ right to vote. The FBI and members of the US Navy searched the swamps outside Philadelphia, Mississippi for missing voter registration activists John Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Local media and white supremacist politicians dismissed their disappearance as a publicity hoax. During the two month-long search the bodies of seven other murdered Black men and one Black boy were found in the swamps of Mississippi. Five have not been identified. After receiving a tip, troops found the young men’s bodies buried under an earthen dam on August 4th. Local members of the KKK, the county sheriff, and the Philadelphia police department were all implicated in the kidnapping and killings.

On August 17th, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution to install a plaque inside the Capitol to commemorate the quartering of volunteer troops at the outset of the Civil War. $2,500 was appropriated for the plaque in 1966.

A week after an insurrection beginning January 6, 2021, which was instigated and led by the president and abetted by congressional representatives from Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, New York, and North Carolina, plus others currently unknown, and which resulted in the storming of the Capitol, the killing of at least two police officers, four mob deaths, and the failed attempted rapes, torture, and public execution of multiple elected officials, and the failed attempt to stop the constitutionally mandated certification of the results of the presidential election, National Guard troops are once again quartering in the Capitol building, as the outgoing president and his collaborators continue to threaten violence against the country and elected leaders. Only this time they’re doing it under this plaque.

a photo by the NY Times' Erin Schaff showing six national guard troops sleeping on the floor of a hallway in the US capitol on Jan 11, 2021, under a large marble bust of Abraham Lincoln and a bronze plaque commemorating the last time troops slept in the Capitol to guard it, at the outset of the Civil War.
National Guard troops sleeping in the hallway of the US Capitol under a plaque commemorating troops sleeping in the US Capitol, image via NYT photographer @erinschaff

If the 103-year gap between the quartering and the commemorating teaches us anything, it’s that it’s probably good to give it at least a minute, history-wise, to see which side everyone ends up on.

Untitled (Blurred Frida), 2020

Untitled (Blurred Frida), 2020, 10×8 in., digital inkjet print, ed. 1/3+1 AP, Washington, DC installation view via zillow

Sometimes it feels like I find these works, and sometimes it feels like they find me. Now [gesturing around at the world] is definitely one of those times where I’ve been actively not, and yet I see a work like this, installed like this, and srsly, what am I supposed to do?

Untitled (Blurred Frida), 2020, installation view detail

It first seemed like this 1932 portrait of Frida Kahlo by her father Guillermo Kahlo was blurred algorithmically a la Google Street View. But the absence of peripheral blurring, plus the unblurred shoulder at left, indicates it is blurred in the print.

[update: when asked for theories, the kid pointed out that the photo has a border along the bottom and right sides, but not along the left. Also, there is a shadow along the left corner, cast by the naked lamp below, but the shadow is blurred above. Thus the portrait was blurred in the listing photo. I feel like I’m raisin’em right.]

Frida Kahlo by Guillermo Kahlo, 1932, 6 x 4.5 in., silver gelatin print, via sothebys

It also looks at first like the image from Frida Kahlo’s Wikipedia page, but it is a cropped version of the fuller image, similar to the vintage print sold at Sotheby’s in 2014, just without the in-negative datestamp.

It will be hard for the second print from the edition, or the AP, to ever match the grandeur of this original installation, though, the world is welcome to try.

Previously, related: Monochrome House and Untitled (Border), both early 2016
UPDATE: though the property is still for sale, the images have been removed lmao

Beatrice Wood Folded Vessel

Beatrice Wood, Folded Vessel, glazed ceramic, to be sold at auction 22 Jan 2021 at Rago Arts

This is a palm-sized ceramic bowl by Beatrice Wood. She began studying ceramics after her Dada phase, and continued working with ceramics until she died in 1998, at the age of 105.

During her Dada phase, when she’d gone to New York as a young woman to pursue acting, she got in deep with Marcel Duchamp and French novelist Henri-Pierre Roché, who later wrote Jules et Jim, but not about another, later love triangle he was in, not with Wood.

Alfred Stieglitz photo of Fountain, Apr 19, 1917, with SIA submission tag visible–and also looking like it has been torn off and reattached, but that’s not the issue now. image via wikipedia

Wood published The Blind Man with Duchamp and Roché, the magazine in which Louise Norton, another friend of this tight-knit posse, defended Fountain after it had been rejected from the Society of Independent Artists’ April 1917 show. Like Duchamp, Norton was also involved in the SIA leadership, and in Stieglitz’s photo of it, Fountain‘s submission tag lists Norton and her address as the alternate contact for R. Mutt.

In The Blind Man Wood wrote of Fountain that the only art America had managed by that point was plumbing and bridges. She created her own entry to the SIA show in Duchamp’s studio. It was a drawing of a woman exiting a bathtub with an actual bar of soap collaged over her crotch, which she gave a punny French title. Like Fountain, it was lost after the show, and decades later she made versions referencing it when the need arose. C’est la vie.

22 Jan 2021, Modern Design, Lot 629: Beatrice Wood, Folded Vessel, volcanic glazed earthenware, est. $1,500-2,000 [ragoarts]
Previously, related to the women friends Duchamp mentioned when explaining Fountain to his sister: Marcel Duchamp Fountain Sword Fight

Bruce Goff Christmas Tree

Jerri Hodges Bonebrake posing with a Christmas tree she created with Bruce Goff at the University of Oklahoma School of Architecture, image via ou.edu

Bruce Goff was the head of the architecture school at the University of Oklahoma from 1948 until 1955, and though her job title was secretary, Jerri Hodges was the administrative backbone and shadow student of the whole, utopian affair. The architecture school was housed under the bleachers of the football stadium, and the space and Goff’s experimental leanings meant the whole place was abuzz with unconventional techniques, materials, exhibitions, productions, and who knows what.

So maybe this Christmas tree made of a myriad of ornaments, snowflakes, and papercraft decorations suspended in space on vertical strings of beads fit right in, and it’s only us, in the future more conventional and bleaker than Goff imagined, who marvel at it. We should be lucky they even thought to take a picture. The catalogue for the 2010 Goff exhibition “Renegades” says they were doing stuff like this all the time. Also, the library’s online gallery only names her, the print version gives Hodges co-credit for the Christmas tree. [h/t @joshlipnik via @cmonstah]

Untitled (Lucien Smith), 2020

Untitled (Lucien Smith), 2020, 8×10 in. digital print in 3-hole, acid-free sleeve, ed. 1/2+2AP, installation shot via sothebys.com

There so many things to catch the eye and tempt the paddle in Kenny Schachter’s second storage-clearing sale at Sotheby’s. One of the most interesting things to me is the veteran collector/dealer/connoisseur’s confidence in attaching shadow box-style frames and tape right over the overflap signatures of his two small (24×18 in.) Lucien Smith Rain paintings.

The next most exciting thing was seeing my newest work, Untitled (Lucien Smith), installed on the back. Believe me, the only person more surprised than me is probably Kenny.

Anyway, the photo, a detail of Smith’s signature on Reality Bites 10, 2012, is inserted in an acetate sleeve, and is an edition of two, with two APs. No. 1/2 is installed on the verso of Lot 35, Lucien Smith’s Reality Bites 10, above, and no. 2/2 is currently installed on the verso of Lot 37, Lucien Smith’s Reality Bites 9, below.

Untitled (Lucien Smith), 2020, 8×10 in. digital print in 3-hole, acid-free sleeve, ed. 2/2, + 2AP, installation image via sothebys.com

Both sales end tomorrow, December 17. The winning bidder of each of these lots is welcome to contact me for a certificate documenting their bonus acquisition, upon verification, of course. Artist proofs reside in copies of Smith’s 2012 exhibition catalogue, Small Rain Paintings. In case you miss out on the 17th.

Lot 35 Lucien Smith, Reality Bites 10, 2012, est. $5-7,000, currently $3,800, no, $4,200! $5,500! Sold for $10,080 [sothebys]
Lot 37 Lucien Smith, Reality Bites 9, 2012, est. $5-7,000, currently $2,000, no, $2,500! $4,200, or $5,292 with premium

On Ethical Luxury

Tom Ford has introduced a wristwatch made of ocean plastic. The following are excerpts from the Departures Magazine marketing email for the watch which, at $995, somehow manages to seem simultaneously expensive and cheap:

The Impact of Ethical Luxury
“In my opinion, ethical luxury is the greatest luxury of all,” says iconic designer and creative director Tom Ford…When you purchase an Ocean Plastic Timepiece, you permanently remove the equivalent of 35 bottles of plastic waste from the ocean.

The Tom Ford Ocean Plastic Timepiece is made from 100-percent ocean plastic collected in seas, along coastlines, and in uncontrolled landfills. Its material contains neither virgin plastics nor non-ocean-bound plastics, and is traceable to its collection source. The ocean plastic granules used in its production have been transported in a carbon-neutral manner, and have been compounded in a solar-powered Swiss facility. Additionally, all packaging is recyclable.

“It is incredibly appealing to know that you are not only wearing a high-quality product, but that by simply owning the product you are also taking direct action to improve the planet.”

I was going to post a photo of Ford modeling the watch, but who even cares at this point. It is a giant black watch with TOM FORD and OCEAN PLASTIC written on the face.

Destroyed Noguchi Ceiling

Isamu Noguchi, Ceiling & Waterfall, 1956-57, 666 Fifth Avenue, destroyed. Image: noguchi.org

In 1957 a sculptural ceiling and wall by Isamu Noguchi was installed in the lobby of 666 Fifth Avenue. The composition of undulating aluminum fins survived the purchase of the building by Jared Kushner, and the gutting and renovation of the Fifth Ave.-facing retail spaces. The wall was more dynamic than the ceiling, which was pretty subtle, but it all worked very nicely together.

But now the Noguchi Museum is reporting that the work has been removed and destroyed. The only bright spot is that the components were donated to the Museum. If anyone has a block-long elevator lobby that needs a space age drop ceiling, hit them up, I guess.

Altered and Destroyed – The Noguchi Museum [noguchi.org]

Guyton & Albenda make U think.

screenshot from The Hoarder II at Sotheby’s

I love this found poetry from the teaser page for Kenny Schachter’s Kondo-ing cash-out sale at Sotheby’s, which starts tomorrow.

It reminds me of Wade Guyton’s 1999 show at Andrew Kreps, Against the New Passeism. Understanding that this is only the beginning, hope for the end. Build, Destroy, Do Nothing.

Against the New Passeism. Understanding that this is only the beginning, hope for the end. Build, Destroy, Do Nothing. installation shot by Jerry Saltz via artnet

Wade installed a rough, fireplace-size, plexi&ply sculpture in the back room, and put the entire back room on display in the main gallery, including a much bigger Ricci Albenda text piece below:

Wade Guyton installation at/starring Andrew Kreps, with Albenda, Robert Melee, Rob Pruitt, Hiroshi Sunairi, Lawrence Seward?… via jerry saltz’s 1999 artnet review

I’d say stay outta my bidding way, but we’re all gonna do what we’re gonna do. I have thought, though, many times, about [bringing back] these early, destroyed Guytons, but just haven’t found the right space yet.

The Hoarder II bidding starts Dec. 10 and runs through Dec. 17. [sothebys]

Chandigarh Find

Pierre Jeanneret, Office Armchair PJ-SI-28-B, India, designed c. 1955
Teak, plasticized string, nylon, aluminum, image: patrickparrish.com

I love Pierre Jeanneret’s furniture for Chandigarh, and I hate the Chandigarh Furniture Industrial Complex. I am relieved that these objects that once were abandoned for scrap are now preserved, but I hate that the cultural context is being stripped away, and that for their value and significance to be recognized, they must be removed and fed through the luxury design machinery of the West. I love seeing this furniture aging and bearing its history, and I hate seeing it stripped and restored and altered into just one more must-have for some instagram junkie to stuff into their Axel Vervoordt McMonastery.

Pierre Jeanneret & Le Corbusier, “Boomerang” Table LC/PJ-TAT-14-A, India, designed c. 1963
Teak, image: patrickparrish.com

I love this stuff, and hate that I want it, but I’ve managed to deal because it’s not like there’s any OG Chandigarh furniture left anyway. Well, Patrick Parrish just kicked the leg off my precariously balanced chair. He is currently showing a collection of pristine, original condition Jeanneret furniture from Chandigarh which has been held for twelve years, and it is utterly exquisite. Everyone who’s ever stripped and dipped a teak armchair and tossed out a horsehair cushion should immediately feel waves of remorse for their design crimes.

Now I love this furniture, and I hate that you haven’t yet sent me $1.26 million so I can buy all 66 pieces for my McMonastery.

I am linking to Patrick’s Pierre Jeanneret Online Viewing Room because it is perfect. The show is IRL until Dec. 31st. There is a book forthcoming. [patrickparrish.com]
Amie Siegel’s Provenance was beautiful and devastating, but has also done nothing to stem the tide, or change the dynamic. [amiesiegel.net]

I Shall Call Him Heni-Me

Gerhard Richter, Cage Grid I, 2011, 303 x 303 cm installed, 16 giclée prints mounted on aluminum panel, ed. 16+4AP

My old qualms about the capitalist reality of Gerhard Richter making photo copies of his greatest paintings were rendered quainter than the Geneva Convention by the introduction of an entirely new category, “facsimile objects.” These mass- and masterfully produced giclée prints, numbered and unsigned, and mounted on aluminum composite panels, are the creation of a print foundry founded by Joe Hage, Richter’s lawyer/collector/OG webmaster, Heni Productions.

Now known as Heni Editions, the firm makes stunning prints for other artists as well. [My favorite non-Richter Heni has to be their full-scale print of Hans Holbein’s the Younger’s The Ambassadors, published to benefit the National Gallery, which is still on my Christmas list.]

P12, “Annunciation After Titian,” 2015, facsimile object, 125x200cm, ed. 50+3AP

Heni got its start in 2011, when it made Cage Grid I, a giclée edition of Richter’s monumental squeegee painting Cage 6, divided into a 16-part grid. The panels were sold in the gift shop of the artist’s retrospective at Tate Modern, both as a set, and individually (as Cage Grid II).

Though facsimile objects initially seemed like they were designed to exist outside Richter’s art, they now appear alongside it. Gagosian included at least two facsimile objects–(P1) and (P12), above–in a Richter prints show earlier this year.

Destroyed Richter Grid No. 1 A-L, 2016, UV pigment on aluminum, 50x60cm each, unique, image: Tamas Banovich

They’ve been installed in my head even longer. In 2016 for Chop Shop, a show where large-scale works were sliced up or parted out to order, I used this grid mode to create Destroyed Richter Grids, full-scale recreations of lost squeegee paintings.

Cage Print (P19-6), 2020, 100x100cm, Diasec-mounted giclée print on aluminum composite panel, ed. 200, image via Heni Leviathan.

Time being a flat circle, Heni has now announced the drop of Cage Prints (P19), facsimile objects in editions of 200 (each) of all six of Richter’s Cage paintings, but at 1/9th-scale, or 100×100 cm. Applications for purchase are currently being accepted (decisions are made on Dec. 6), though with no guarantee of Christmas delivery.

Untitled (Heni Cage Grid), 2020, 103 x 103 cm, Diasec-mounted giclée print on aluminum composite panel, in 16 25 x 25 cm parts, ed. 16+4AP

And so I, too, must, compelled by fate, announce a new work, Untitled (Heni Cage Grid), in which a Heni facsimile object of Cage 6 is cut into 16 pieces, each 25×25 cm. Like Richter’s Cage Grid I, it will be available in an edition of 16, plus 4AP. Each piece will be labeled and numbered, and a couple will include fragments of the original label. Some may be sold separately.

Unlike Heni, I can guarantee it will not be available before Christmas.

Cage Prints (P19-1 thru P19-6), 2020, $6,000 each, upon application [heni.com]

Previously, very much related:
Cage Grid: Gerhard Richter and the Photo Copy
Gerhard Richter Facsimile Objects

Previously, also related:
Untitled (Re-Graham), 2016
Untitled (Glafira Warhol), 2015

Wow. Matson Jones For Sale

The four-part cyanotype/photogram that is Matson Jones’ masterpiece will be offered for sale in a few days at Christie’s.

Previously known as Jasper Johns Blue Ceiling when it was being offered for a variety of mid-seven-figure prices a few years ago, the work, by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns is now untitled. The duo made it in 1955 for a window display at Bergdorf Goodman. The design director who hired them, Gene Moore, held onto the prints for several decades, until they were acquired in 1978 by the current owner.

Roberta Bernstein included an illustration of them in the chronology of Johns’ catalogue raisonée (v5, 8.), but not in the works section.

The estimate is $600-800,000 but seriously, who even knows? I just know I want them, and/or I want to see them in a museum somewhere, away from direct sunlight.

Dec. 2, Lot 40: Matson Jones, Untitled, 1955, est. $600-800k [christies. UPDATE: Sold for $750,000, hopefully with a gentle landing.]

Previously, related: Wait what? Jasper Johns Blue Ceiling by Matson Jones??
Matson was Mrs. Rauschenberg’s Maiden Name
Also related: Michael Lobel’s Artforum cover story about Rauschenberg’s early blueprint collaborations with Susan Weil